Okay, seriously, Notre Dame’s Alumni Association are scaring the crap out of me. They’re like the Catholic Mafia or something. First incident: earlier this week I received the annual ND “Christmas-card-and-donation-plea” but was surprised to see it addressed to both myself and the Snook. How in the hell did they know we got married? I didn’t tell them. That’s spooky. And then today I got an e-mail asking me to fill out an alumni survey… addressed to my Gmail address. I’ve never given them my Gmail address. How do they know this stuff? How is it that members of my own family don’t even know my address over here but Notre Dame has me under total surveillance? Am I the only one?

I got an e-mail this morning notifying me that the new Knitty is up, but before I could even settle down into it Andrew forwarded me a link to this pattern. Heh. (Based on the URL, I thought it was going to be a wombat.) Maybe I’ll knit him and Kathleen one for a wedding present? 🙂

Later: Okay, now that I’ve had a read, there are a couple other patterns that caught my eye. This hat is adorable and I love the little skiers. This cuff may tempt me into trying bead knitting. I’m always up for more socks. And I know the Snook would love a tux penguin! But my absolute favorite is Belle Epoque. *swoon* Sooo Elizabeth Bennet.

Place the State. How well do you know your US geography? My score: 96%, 8 miles, 319 seconds. (I really only messed up one or two at the beginning and then the rest were all perfect.)

Turn your Mac into a typewriter. Well, not really. But that nifty bit of shareware makes typewriter noises whenever you push a key, including a nice clunky carriage return when you hit “enter.” It scared the crap out of the Snook and made me giggle like crazy, which is pretty much a glowing recommendation. 🙂

The comment spam is really, really pissing me off. I’m happy in that I’ve succeeded in keeping it from showing up on the site, but I still growl every time I log in and find I’ve got 400 pending spam comments to delete. I’ve just coded in my latest grenade in this escalating war: a limit on the number of links per comment. Let me know if any of you legitimate users bump into it. (I don’t think you will.) Is there some way I could show this crap to Google and just, you know, have them remove comment spammers’ links from their index? Because that would rule.

Whoa! Somebody on MetaFilter is reporting that a friend got busted by US Customs after a bar of Lush soap tested positive for THC. She was threatened with jail time and received a $500 fine. And there I was three months ago, blissfully unaware as I marched through airports across the US carting about twenty pounds of Lush products home for the fam!

And while it was so awesome to see my family again, I’ve never been so happy to get back after a trip before. Almost three years to the day since I migrated here… and I guess it’s really finally home in my heart now. We’ve got lots of pictures and stories to tell, but for now I’ll be sleeping off my cold and my jet lag for the next 24 hours. Many thanks to Helen for watching the fort for us. (And as for the cat? We might as well have only been gone for an hour. Sheesh.)